Inner Vision: Temporary Blindness

Did you ever see that episode of Night Gallery where Joan Crawford plays a wealthy blind woman who’ll do anything to be able to see? She’s very mean, very crazy, very bitter  - and no one really likes her but they kiss her ass because she has money? No, not Faye Dunaway’s marvelous spectacle with the bulging eyes and the wire hangers. I’m talking about the real Joan Crawford in early color TV.

Anyway, so Joan plays this blind woman. She’s been blind her whole life and is desperate to be able to see. Her doctor tells her the only way that it might be possible is if he performs a transplant by using someone else’s eyes. Living tissue, of course, no cadavers, please. She’s elated with this news, but has to blackmail Doc to get him to do it.  With nary a care for anyone else, she offers to pay some exorbitant amount to a poor-vulnerable- and-hence-makes-her-worse man for his eyes. He’s so desperate that he agrees - and with all this delicious devilishness afoot, the surgery is performed.

Joan can hardly wait to take off the bandages and counts the slowly ticking minutes by the chimes on her clock. Finally, the time is at hand. She breathlessly removes the bandages only to find that she is still in the dark and can’t see a thing.  She thinks she’s still blind, but what she can’t see is that there’s a blackout and the whole city has gone dark. She stumbles around her apartment in a fevered frenzy and finally freefalls out the penthouse window into a grisly splat. Re-enter Rod with a witty wrap-up about being careful what you wish for.

The moral of the story, from Lisa’s view? We have to be ready for what we receive and recognize it; otherwise it could all go to shit.

Hold on, I’m not being a hypocrite. I’m just making a clarification so we don’t wind up face-down on the concrete like our high-end friend. I know I’ve been telling you all along that everything we want and need is waiting for us out there in the great cosmos and it’s ours simply for the asking. And it is, I promise you. But we still have to do our part, and our part is the awareness. From self-awareness comes understanding; from understanding, harmony; from harmony comes peace; and from peace within comes peace without. That’s how our spiritual system works.

The failure to recognize our good is as much a spiritual kind of blindness as it is physical. We often don’t see what’s right in front of us, because we’re expecting something else. 

Like this laptop I’m using. Typing away, being spiritual and all that. It’s a brand new Mac, complete with all the programs I don’t know how to use. A few months ago, my old laptop started to bug out. You know that slow descent into the big crash/black screen? I thought about how I needed to get a new one, and that I would probably get a Mac after I saved up all my pennies.

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